Laotians To Begin Hunt For Mias

November 22, 1987|By New York Times News Service.

VIENTIANE, LAOS — The United States and Laos have announced an agreement under which Washington will begin considering the ``humanitarian problems`` of this isolated country as the Laotians step up the search for Americans missing since the Vietnam War.

The accord is similar to one concluded last summer between the U.S. and Vietnam., under which American experts on the missing have already visited Hanoi for consultation.

At the same time, the U.S. soon will deliver a shipment of rice to Laos, where this year`s crop, now being harvested, has been severely affected by drought.

Friday`s announcement of the agreement followed the first formal Laotian- U.S. technical meeting on the search for missing Americans, held here Nov. 11-13.

Fourteen years after U.S. forces withdrew from Indochina, 555 Americans are still unaccounted for in Laos. Most of them were shot down in bombing raids on the Ho Chi Minh Trail, along which the North Vietnamese resupplied communist armies in the south through Laotian territory.

The United States also bombed the Plain of Jars, where Lao Communist forces were numerous.

In addition to the missing in Laos, 1,757 Americans are unaccounted for in Vietnam and 91 in Cambodia.

Pressures in the U.S. from organizations representing the families of the missing in action and unaccounted-for prisoners of war have forced the communist Pathet Lao government to deal with the issue as a prerequisite to better relations with Washington.

Both Laos and the Reagan administration have condemned private American efforts to mount searches in Laos.